I'm a "financial guy" too, and the only way I know how to do this would be to fund the liability with a corresponding asset that is appreciating at the level of inflation plus any interest earned in the deferral. Otherwise, the deferred payments have to either come out of future earned revenue or be borrowed. By "operating budgets," are you assuming that the Brewers will pay deferred money out of non-payroll expenses like concessions? That would seem odd. Deferred contracts mean that future payrolls will be less than they could be if the deferrals were not present. The payroll may be higher in five years than it is today, but if there is deferred money involved, it is lower than it could have been if the deferred money wasn't there. There's really no other way around it. I'm an accountant and this is not rocket science (would any rocket scientists think accounting is hard?). The tax reporting books will have a deferred liability from year earned. So they time the deductions so that they are not rollercoastering the net income and net loss for owner tax reporting. NBD. So the biggest issue is cash flow. I assume quite a bit of non-payroll planning is coordinated with player deferred payments. Last year not as much deferred payroll, so we can fund the concourse improvements. This year is maybe mostly taken up by deferred payroll. Next year, when deferred payroll goes down to $2.0M, they will pay for the brunt of the spring training facility (haven't read on timeline of project), etc. Just to give some very simple examples.